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The Other Press

[XTC and Hall & Oates Reviewed

Now showingat 820Granville Mall

Capital 6

by Duane Rockerbie

EMERSON, LAKE & PALMER In Concert

You know some albums | just really love to tear apart in print.

As a form of music, | thought ‘‘art-rock’’ died soon after it began around ten years ago, but appa- rently one group keeps re- emerging from the grave, the dreaded ELP. It resur- rects when we least expect it, leaving behind a pile of confusing garbage that no ne can decipher.

You know they really fooled us with their as- sumed swansong album “‘Love Beach’’, but you can’t kill the undead.

It seems all these three guys are trying to prove is that they play the most boring and pointless solos around with bits of har- mony squeezed in between. Pointless synthesizer nood- ling, shameless audience pandering, lyrics. beyond the limits of banality, the rape of ‘’Pictures at an Exhibition’’, it’s all there and only for $7.98.

With mallot in hand |

’ drove the wooden stake

through the vinyl and lept back as the — record screamed in a demonic tone and then quietly turned to dust. But later, as | turned on the radio with trembling fingers, there were the cold, shallow sounds... . the sounds of ELP, the band that wouldn’t die.

HALL & OATES X-Static

Daryl Hall and John Oates have been criticizing society and its’ little quarks for a long time now, while developing more and more of a heavy metal approach on every album. This me- thod seems to have peaked on their 1978 LP ‘Along the Red Ledge’’, a fine album but a striking. con- trast from previous albums like ‘‘Beauty on the Back- streets’’.

Their new album ‘’X-

Static’’ has them getting - back down to what they do

best: sing and play in a style more firmly rooted in rhythm and blues, empha- sizing melodic lines and rhythms fused with the instrumental colorings of rock.

They seem to have struck a fine and inviting balance. Many of the songs are reminiscent of their biggest previous hits, especially “Wait for Me’’, a first cousin of ‘‘She’s Gone’’, and that is meant as a com- pliment.

There is even a polite gesture towards disco with the appropriately _ titled ‘‘Portable Radio’’, but it is

February 18, 1980

tastefully done. The last three tracks on the album provide those’ who prefer Hall & Oates for their heavy metal style complete satisfaction. |

All in all a fine effort from two consistently good musicians»

XTC Drums and Wires

Where does England. keep coming up with these sensational avant-garde bands?

XTC, a group which e- merged in the middle of 1977, strongly reminds me of another group formed the same year, Talking Heads. The parallelisms are easy to point out: Andy. Partridge’s paranoid sing- ing ranks with | David Byrne, intriguing shuffling rhythms, and a great diver- sity of styles. However, XTC, unlike Talking Heads, show a great sense of humour with tunes like ““Scissor Man”’ and ‘‘Roads Girdle the Globe’’.

The best racks on the album are ‘‘Life Begins at the Hop’’, the story of growing up around an ado- lescent dance hall, ‘‘Mil- lions’’, which criticizes bands who sell-out to wes- tern commercialism, and the hit ‘“Making Plans for

Nigel’’, which is too bizarre

to try interpreting.

This effort from XTC is what | feel is one of the first of the second or even third wave of music from Eng- land, that is, albums which are more carefully thought out, more sophisticated by mixing pop, reggae, and other styles into a balanced blend, and _ technically much better produced and more polished, a welcome change from overly simplis- tic music seen in North American i.e. (guess who) the Knack, Cheap Trick, etc.

Sometimes | sit back and ponder what is going on in the minds of the record- buying public out there. Just glancing at the weekly Top-20 sales, | noticed many records which in no way deserve to even be ina Top-50, namely albums like the Eagles’ ‘’The Long Run’ and Pink Floyd's “The Wall’.

The only answer is that the average rock fan buys records on faith and not by quality, exclaiming ‘’Yeah, man, Led Zeppelin’s got good guitars.’’ I’m not knocking anybody but it sure is a shame. For those of you who don’t buy

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records: Never mind.